Saturday, June 16, 2012

You can't always get what you want, even if that is satisfaction?

So, I was listening to Pandora, and all of a sudden I hear a Rolling Stones piece that I hadn't heard for a very long time ...

Timeless!

I then pulled up this version on YouTube:



Naturally, I then had to listen to ...

Friday, June 15, 2012

A big day for two Bengalis, on opposite sides of the planet

Rajat Gupta, who was born in Calcutta, and who went on to head the famed McKinsey, and served on quite a few prestigious corporate and non-profit boards, was found guilty of insider trading:
Count 1 – Conspiracy to commit securities fraud — Guilty
Count 2 – Securities Fraud – Not Guilty – Goldman Sachs ahead of the investment bank’s March 2007 earnings.
Count 3 – Securities Fraud – Guilty – Goldman Sachs ahead of Warren Buffett investing $5 billion.
Count 4 – Securities Fraud – Guilty – Goldman ahead of Buffett deal.
Count 5 – Securities Fraud – Guilty – Goldman Sachs ahead of its December 2008 earnings.
Count 6 – Securities Fraud – Not Guilty — Procter & Gamble ahead of its January 2009 earnings.
The conspiracy count carries a prison term of up to five years and a fine of at least $250,000. Each securities fraud count carries a maximum of 20 years and a fine of $5 million.
Not looking good for Gupta:
U.S. Atty. Preet Bharara has called trading on nonpublic inside information "rampant" on Wall Street.

"Having fallen from respected insider to convicted inside trader, Mr. Gupta has now exchanged the lofty boardroom for the prospect of a lowly jail cell," Bharara said.
 Bharara, as I noted before, was the attorney in the Raj Rajaratnam case, and all the people being of South Asian origin.  Not to forget the "Indian mafia!"

We people have truly arrived in the US, from technology to Wall Street to politics to prison time!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, another Bengali is looking at an uptick in his fortunes:
India's ruling Congress party on Friday nominated Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee for the largely ceremonial post of president, capping several days of dramatic negotiations that exposed a frail government coalition. Congress President Sonia Gandhi announced the party's decision, praising Mr. Mukherjee for a "long and distinguished career of public service" over more than four decades and urging all parties to back him.
It used to be said that Bengal was so ahead of everybody else that whatever happened in Bengal today happened elsewhere a few days after.  If that is true, then ... oh, maybe that is the end of the world that the Mayans predicted :)


Thursday, June 14, 2012

Dance of the day: Scherezade Grand Pas De Deux

For an arts-challenged guy that I am, well, I actually like to watch and listen to music and dance.  And, no, I am not talking about a Britney Spears jumping about letting out some constipated sounds, as a cousin recently put it :)  I am talking about real music and real dance.  It is like how I intentionally check C-Span and C-Span2--intentionally!

Anyway, there I was, yet again, checking to see what might be out there on the wonderful Classic Arts Showcase channel.  An aria from Lakmé was ending, and I stayed on to see what would be next.

Boy, was I in for a treat!

It was a wonderful dance, choreographed to the music from Scheherazade.  Months ago, I bought an old Scheherazade LP, and have played that only once.  The music did sound lovely to my caveman ears. But, listening to music was very different an experience compared to having my eyes and ears follow the music.

I waited for the piece to end--I wanted to know the dancers names, which, I didn't pay attention to when it began and I was confident, would lead me to the YouTube clip. 

"Ilze Liepa and Victor Yeremenko" were listed as the soloists.

A simple search for the dancers names and Scheherazade was all it took:



I blogged once earlier about such a serendipitous experience.  The craziest thing is this: that post was about Lakmé itself!  What a coincidence!  The Indian in me and Lakmé; well, luck me :)

Going after Obama's Kill List leakers makes case for WikiLeaks

Finally, Jon Stewart has something to say about the emperor's President's Kill List

Now, before you click play and laugh away, here is more for you about those darned drones; let us see if you will laugh now!

Senator Rand Paul is introducing a bill to protect us--yes, you and me living in America--from those darned drones:
Like other tools used to collect information in law enforcement, in order to use drones a warrant needs to be issued. Americans going about their everyday lives should not be treated like criminals or terrorists and have their rights infringed upon by military tactics
WTF, right?  We have reached a situation where the Constitution and the Bill of Rights apparently aren't enough, and we need additional legislation to protect us and our rights from our own government. 

Meanwhile, Obama's don't-take-prisoners-to-Guantanamo-but-kill-them approach via drones is, as one can easily predict, triggering (yes, awful pun!) the growth of anti-American sentiments in those countries where drones are extensively used:
The New York Times has an extraordinary Op-Ed this morning by Ibrahim Mothana, a 23-year-old democracy activist and Al Qaeda opponent in Yemen. The headline is “How Drones Help Al Qaeda,” and it explains in compelling detail how the principal U.S. tactic ostensibly devoted to fighting Al Qaeda in his country — repeated drone attacks — is having exactly the opposite effect.
At the end of his post, Greenwald also refers to the Jon Stewart clip on the Kill List.  But, wait, there is more for you.  As Stewart point out, those pompous Congressional folks are upset--not at the fact that the President has his finger on a Kill List, but about the fact this was leaked.  How dare they leak it!

You see why the likes of Julian Assange are important for democracy?  If in a supposedly democratic US there can be so much of a secrecy about government programs, and when there is bipartisanship against leaks, one can imagine how incredibly opaque things might be in many other countries around the world. 

Speaking of Assange, he lost his legal battle against extradition. 

Ok, here is the Daily Show segment; watch and weep!

Philosophical hassles with income inequality. Can Rawls or Bain help you out?

Before graduate school, I found it extremely easy to figure out answers to pressing public policy issues.  Graduate school messed me up--it was challenging to sort out the competing interpretations on any given issue.  It was like I ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge and I was, therefore, condemned to a life of constant weighing of the multiple narratives.

In one of the courses, two readings were paired together--an essay by John Rawls (one of the earlier essays prior to the publication of his magnum opus) and Robert Nozick's counterargument.  Years of doing math and science hadn't prepared me for this.  Math and science seemed way easier compared to figuring out my own public policy prescriptions post-Rawls and post-Nozick.  And then there was another essay--by Isiah Berlin on thinking about liberty in two ways

Over the years, I have found that the ideas from these three, more than anything else, complicate my personal take on any of the pressing public policy issues of the day. 

Income inequality is one of the most contemporary urgent issues.  In the old days, before wandering around in graduate school, I would have flatly stated that income inequality is awful.  Now, I have to wear Rawls' "veil of ignorance" and think about Berlin's "postive and negative freedom" while dealing with Nozick's libertarianism.  The result: nothing is ever easy anymore.  Nor am I stupid enough to echo the words and sentiments of a former president who proudly claimed that he did not do nuance!

Even while sorting these out through those philosophical filters, there is Warren Buffett with his "ovarian lottery," which is what Michael Lewis also seems to point out:
Don't be deceived by life's outcomes. Life's outcomes, while not entirely random, have a huge amount of luck baked into them. Above all, recognize that you have had success, you have also had luck. And with luck comes obligation. You owe a debt, and not just to your gods. You owe a debt to the unlucky.
Keep all those in mind as you watch Jon Stewart talk with Edward Conard, a former managing director of Bain Capital before he retired when he was about fifty years old.





Tuesday, June 12, 2012

These made me laugh today :)




How are college campuses like the USSR?

No, it is not any cheap shot at faculty who walk around calling each other "comrade." 
(Wait a sec, that was a cheap shot, right?  But, it is true--they proudly and loudly use the words "comrade" and "solidarity" ...)

Tim Groseclose, a political economist at UCLA, writes in the context of the faculty there rejecting a general education requirement:
While few people will say it, nearly everyone on college campuses understands that the “studies” classes are not very rigorous; nor do they have high intellectual standards.
If, however, you say something like that on a university campus, within seconds you’ll usually hear a reply such as, “No, no academic discipline is any more rigorous than any other.  It’s just that different disciplines require different talents.”
Notwithstanding how often you hear such statements, no one in the history of mankind has ever said, “Darn, I made a D in Chicano studies.  I guess now I’ll have to major in chemistry.”  In contrast, lots of people have said the opposite.  Academic conservatives—even those who are leftwing politically—understand that fact.
My liberal friend made another claim:  The same academic conservatives, although they do not think very highly of the “studies” departments, do not want to admit that fact publicly.  They understand the mob-like responses they will have to face, including being called a racist, if they do that.  ...
Thus, the current situation on college campuses is similar to the last several years of the Soviet Union.  Nearly everyone can see that the system is faulty.  But no one will dare to say that publicly.
Groseclose brings up a number of issues that those outside the academic walls, and many even inside, do not understand.  The first is that left-of-center faculty (which, by and large, includes me too, which is all the more why the "comrades" get pissed off at me, I think) can also be academic conservatives.  Conservatives in the sense of holding on to ideas and ideals that have are often considered old-fashioned anymore: such as, we are about education and knowledge and not about credentialing or inflating grades; we expect students to be self-driven and engaged; faculty will have the highest sense of integrity and will welcome differing opinions; .... you see what I mean?

The various "studies" are often--not always--much lighter intellectual endeavors.  While they are always presented as serious activities, in practice, many of the "studies" are what most students would recognize as easy A.  Further, they tend to be ideological in nature.

One disagreement with Groseclose: he writes that no one will dare to say publicly how faulty the system is.  Ahem, not me; I have been saying and writing about this for years!  Which is also why the "comrades" excommunicated me :)

Monday, June 11, 2012

China and India in the global economy? Spot them if you can!

Do you see the two countries of India and China in the graphic below?


Your eyes aren't deceiving you!

Even after we adjust for purchasing power parity, China's per capita income barely cracks into the top 100, at #92.

Ecuador, which was a wonderful experience at tourist prices that even I could afford, is ahead of China!

So, why are we then so obsessed with economic growth rates in India and China?  Perhaps because we are always looking for some boogeyman?

Meanwhile, reports about India's economy are getting gloomier by the day.  The Times of India says that "India may become first 'fallen angel' among BRIC countries."

Somebody better inform the politicians about these!

The poetry of a term coming to an end ...

After I collect the tests and papers that students in the freshman class turn in, the first thing I do is to flip over to the final pages of each of those submitted works hoping that there would be interesting comments for me.  For, it was not that much out of the ordinary for students to include comments like, "thanks for a great class," or, well, you get the drift.

One term, a student made a flip-book kind of thanks, which was innovative. A few years ago, one student in my intro class upped the ante to levels I had never experienced before.  It was an in-class exam, and she had written a rhyming set of lines at the end of her responses. 

Since then, ironically, there have been only occasional comments from intro class students anymore. 

And, nothing at all over the last couple of years.

I am hoping that it is not because I have changed and that my work doesn't spark in students anything substantive for them to write such comments.

Perhaps I come across as way too intense now, compared to years past, especially now that the age gap has widened between a typical intro class student and me.

But, hey, to that student, whose name--and I am sheepish to admit it--I hadn't jotted down, well, a big thanks to you wherever you are.  I did save your verse:


When it rains nude in Spain ... does it stay in the plains?

The Guardian has a collection of photos of people cycling in the nude.  Odd that the countries (and state) where the nude bicyclists were photographed are also the ones with some serious economic problems now ...


I would imagine that the bicycle seat, which is highly uncomfortable even when appropriately attired, gets even more uncomfortable when unclothed.  Different strokes for different folks, eh!

Meanwhile, Spain, where the nude bicyclists featured here were photographed, is being bailed out with  gazillion dollars.  Not that the nude bicyclists are the world's problems ... but, ...

Sunday, June 10, 2012

The imperial presidencies of Obama and Bush! Father knows worst!

As if the thought of going to the dentist office the first thing on a Monday morning isn't enough for me to get into a fetal position under the sheets, I have to figure out how to calm myself down after reading the following three commentaries on the Nobel Peace Prize recipient, President Obama, and his zealous use of drones to kill.

Slate has a detailed interactive map:
Since Obama took office, media outlets have reported more than 300 drone strikes in Pakistan targeting al-Qaeda or the Taliban, outnumbering the Bush administration’s drone strikes five to one. Supporters say the strikes are an efficient way to kill militants, while critics say the strikes kill too many civilians, spur terrorist recruitment, shirk judicial oversight, and represent an abuse of presidential power. This map, which is based on data from the New America Foundation, displays the location and kill count of reported drone strikes since 2004 and shows that Obama has greatly extended the drone program.
 From the other side of the planet, this op-ed in The Hindu comments on the "imperial presidency":
Having criticised the Bush administration for the secret practices of surveillance, interrogation and detention, Mr. Obama has dramatically expanded the practice of secretly putting people on kill lists. Drone warfare greatly stretches the boundaries of the imperial presidency. It has expanded presidential power enormously relative to Congressional checks and judicial oversight.
It also raises the question: is the extrajudicial of killing foreigners (and Americans living abroad) following a bureaucratic determination, as Obama is doing, more or less frightening and morally condemnable than capturing them and sending them to detention and torture in Guantánamo Bay, as Mr. Bush did and Mr. Obama condemned? As with other administrations in most countries around the world, the government forgets or chooses to ignore that the expanded, unchecked power will be available to subsequent administrations. 
Finally, from Glenn Greenwald:
the American media has been repeatedly and willingly coopted in the Obama administration’s propagandistic abuse of its secrecy powers, with a focus on the recent high-profile, Obama-flattering national security scoops from The New York Times.
Oh well; if only I had paid attention to how ignorance is bliss!


American students avoid science and math because of ... postmodernism?

When I was a kid, adults encouraged us kids to eat vegetables that might not typically appeal to us by saying things like, "eat this so that you will do better in science."  Or sometimes, it was "eat this so that you will get better at maths."  I am sure quite a few kids held their noses and gobbled up vegetables they hated only to make sure that they did better in science and math.  (Not me: I loved them all--vegetables and science and math!)

I wonder if parents and grandmas say that anymore to India's children.  Perhaps not.  If so, that will be awful, because the kids don't know what they are missing--vegetables and education!

Here in the US, the veggie food route to science and math will never work, given the typical aversion that most children have for vegetables, science, math.  Well, I take it back; it appears that the young might even hold their noses and swallow the veggies if they can entirely avoid science and math.  Again, they don't know what they are missing--vegetables and education! (Except this veggie, of course!)

My initial experiences of Americana were as a graduate student.  Walking or biking across campus from the social sciences area towards math, science, and engineering, well, was often punctuated by an observation about the rapidly decreasing female population.  The few female students in those areas were almost always graduate students from India or China or Europe.  American-born undergraduate science or math majors, male or female, were a minority on campus. 

American students avoiding math and science seems to have only gotten worse.  American-born science and math students are practically an endangered species in higher education. And that is terribly unfortunate.

The higher education system, meanwhile, makes it all the more attractive for students to almost bypass science and math.  While by now I ought to be used to this, I continue to be shocked every single time when I realize how easy it is for students to complete "higher education" and even graduate with a perfect 4.0 GPA, but with barely a couple of classes in science.  And even those science classes tend to be "Mickey Mouse" classes, as one student put it.

The hyper-inflated sense of self that students gain throughout their K-12 system does not help either.  The school system appears to be hell-bent on telling students how special they all are, and that they can do anything they wanted to do in life. Of course, we need to convey the idea that the world is their oyster, but shouldn't we also make sure they understand that hard work is a prime ingredient in a successful formula?  But, it seems that educators systematically dismiss that often one needs to go after difficult tasks, and that life is not simply about plucking those non-existent metaphorical low hanging fruits.

Science and math are by no means any low hanging fruit.  Well, accomplishment in anything, in the arts or languages or whatever, is not as easy to pluck those fruits.

I am convinced that this awful state of education is a result of the postmodernist conditions in education--though I love the postmodernist environment within which I operate.  Modernism and reason have been replaced with arguments of multiple truths.  While philosophically I have no problems with this, and have come to enjoy it over the years, the translation of these ideas into how we educate students means that we are in the mess that we are in now.

The multiplicity of truths, as opposed to the truth, has led us to legitimize any crazy approach to education as equally valid.  Along the way, we have even empowered students to stand up and loudly proclaim their aversions towards science and math.  We have then provided plenty of routes for them to "succeed" without ever having to deal with science and math.  (They do geography, for instance!)

Students educated in this manner in colleges and universities across these United States then go on to become teachers in elementary, middle, and high schools, where they amplify the message that children can do whatever they want to do without ever paying homage to science and math.  Science and math be damned, eh!

I still shudder recalling how an English professor told the freshman Honors students, in a course that I had put together, that it was completely ok if they were not good in science and math.  Because, she was like that and she made it as an English professor.  What a message to give impressionable college freshman, right?

Thus, even a small university like mine has quite an extraordinary amount of fluffy courses (like geography?) where students can excel.  The number of students graduating with the various levels of "laude" honors seems to increase year after year.  A casual scan of the list here indicates the highly skewed ratio of non-science to science majors when it comes to summa and magna cum laude.  Seriously, how many of us will openly admit that for a typical student, earning a B in organic chemistry is way more difficult than earning an A in economic geography?  I will.

What have we gained then as a society after thousands of students thus graduate magna cum laude